You have taken me out of context in many of those cases. I am also not saying that anything published as science is thus inherently correct. Many theories turn out to be wrong however this is not a limit of science but a limit of human observers interpreting prematurely as well as trying to get results to get grants.... I am referring to the scientific method in general as a means for explaining observations.

Science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method. It is a means to acquire truths about the world. While I agree with your statement that it is easier to prove something incorrect than true, science is still about gaining truths in many ways. It does adapt but the goal is to find why something occurs? Is this not a truth? As I said I think these truths may be ultimately relative to our point of observation within reality. This is sort of what Godels Theorem states.

You have just proven my point that people misunderstand science. Newtonian physics and QM are both forms of science. High heels are a form of shoes they do not represent all shoes (all shoes are not high heels). Science is just a way to make observations and try and explain those observations. This is it. These explanations have predictive power to explain future observations. Newtonian physics is a branch of formulas for explaining observations at one level of reality. QM explains a different level. They are both equally valid branches of science.

Science is valid at all levels of reality and for all observations. QM is a form of science. Please explain what the statement "science breaks down at the quantum level?" even mean. This has nothing to do with semantics.

QM is a form of the science. It is not weirder than science wants to admit. It is science. It just doesn't fit the classical notion that many people have about the behavior of reality, it is still in every sense of the word an accurate and efficient form of science. Just because it gives us a unique view about reality does not mean it is not science.

To many science is a religion as many blindly believe anything that comes from science without reading the method used. However science is not faith based but is a way of thinking and testing hypothesis. Scientists believe in science because it is a logical and effective means of thought. It has limitations which I have stated. However it is an effective means to gain knowledge about reality. Whereas religion is just a way to explain observations by making up solutions.

A religious person would say trees grow because god waves a wand and tells them to grow. A scientist would say lets devise a way to see how a tree grows. What if we take away sunlight? What about soil? What about this nutrient? Then what if we remove this protein? or this hormone? It is using logic to explain observations

So the observation is that trees grow. How do they grow? What are the necessary components and processes for them to grow? It doesn't matter what the observation is. It is a strategy to explain observations that uses logic and tests. There are limitations however it has been more effective than ANY other lines of thought.

Doesn't anyone see how easy it is to explain hallucinogenic experience on the brain?

Look at any wall on a bunch of acid or dmt or whatever. What will you see? Lets say you see a small pattern in that wall because you focus on a particular 5x5 centimeter space. Then all of a sudden you brain takes that 5x5cm space and paints it over the entire wall you are looking it. Thats all that happening.

This thing we call pattern recognition is normal. Our brain just has ways of not putting that patter all over what we normally see. When are brain is over analyzing of taking in too much info or amplifieing the information it makes total sense that the brain can just take the first pattern you see or the one you focus on and paint it all over a surface.

Its the same if you recognize a so called pattern in a pile of rocks. Your mind paints the image from the initial pattern or whatever that you start to zone out on.

The same goes for colors. All SWIMs DMT experiences the majority of colors depend on the setting. If SWIM is in a room with more orange the visuals are all dominate by pinks oranges and reds. If the room has more green its dominated by blue green purples stuff like that.

For facial recognition and entity contact the same ideas follow. If you see something and your brain is misfiring lets say your eyes are closed. YOur brain decides I am going to project an image of something in your deep memories mix it all and spit it out and wallah you see a weird clock being jumping upside down and shooting sparks all over or something. Its just your brain trying to conjure up something.

The emotion content goes without saying. All psychedelics can potentially bring out DEEP emotional contact.

I dunno I can't ramble anymore.

What is the human mind? Can anyone say they have the answer?

I am sorry if I did. But you seem pretty clear on where you stand by which I have quoted you.



I am not saying you are saying that. I am showing you where you stated in multiple cases that science is a means to aquire truth, while pointing out samples of where science breaks down. According to Godel's in-completeness theorem, with incomplete information about a system, one cannot prove a necessarily true theorem about that system. Science breaks down, because it is human science, and humans are flawed.



We are arguing semantics again. What does it matter if I say science is limited? Isn't it a given I am speaking about human observations? Science can not exist as it is without human observers. It is not a thing in itself by itself. Which is why QM is so mysterious. Science breaks down because it is human interpretation of observations from a study of a reality of which is absurd.



And I still disagree about where we stand on truth.



Not necessarily. I have a problem in the way you use the word truth applied to science. It is still an observation and a general human consensus. There are no absolutes. Nothing is proven in science. (If I have ever used the word prove, I apologise.) Intersubjective consensus is deduced and is run through mathematical theorems. Science provides theory.



Then how true it can be is all dependant on how real you want to call reality. I deconstructed reality to the best of my ability in my first post.



Everything is science when a human observer is present to observe the observable. The sun rises in the east. That is science. As I said before, this is a silly argument.



Catagorizing and quantifying.



Sure, they are. Just that at the QM level things get a bit weirder and unexplainable.



You asked how can "science break down?" I ask, why not? Sure science is valid at all levels of human observable reality. I used the statement "science breaks down" in the context of QM. Perhaps the best way to describe how science breaks down in the tiny world of QM is that there are still a lot of questions about the nature of QM. Questions we have no answers for yet. QM is conventional science broken down; Unsolved mysteries that science has yet to provide explanations for, such as Entanglement. If you don't like the wording of "breaks down", I am sorry.



So it is science. It is weirder than science wants to admit. It is weirder than it lets on. Science is sometimes weird and absurd.(Isn't everything?) This is arguing semantics.



I was never trying to incur that QM was not science. It gives us a unique view about reality? Weird.



Science is definately a tool. An intelligent person will devise, observe and categorize the tree. An equally intelligent person will ask what is a tree in the first place, and why?



Oh I agree. I also still think that science can break down.

Godspark have you ever thought just how accurate science is? Even science like quantum mechanics is VERY accurate. Science doesn't "break down" because of philosophical arguments about what we think is real etc etc. Or what constitutes proof.

I find it a bit weird that the vote is 11-20..

What do you mean by accurate?



Why not?

I think it is up to you, Godspark, to explain what you mean by science breaks down which I feel you have not done. I am having a hard time understanding what you mean by this as I think you are mistaking the scientific method with human interpretation/understanding of the results obtained. Questions still remaining about nature do not show that science has broken down. The quantum world is still being accurately investigated. No one is claiming the science has answered all the questions. That is ridiculous. However you know that everything QM predicts about nature is accurate at that scale. While humans may have a difficult time understanding how this is so, the laws of reality have little concern for our pondering and this is separate from QM.

It still seems as if you think that science says QM is weird. QM is a science. Thus you may say that view of nature that the scientific method has lead us to on the quantum scale (using QM) is different than classical physics and thus weird. But the scientific method is the same weather observing the quantum world or your backyard. It does not change it can only make models about reality for us. This is not semantics but rather a fundamental understanding of what science is. The accuracy depends on the integrity and logic of the experiment. The results can be true on a relative sense. It is true that the earth is round.

I would say that accurate means yielding results that are efficient, replicable and can be used to predict future events. I agree they maybe relative but they are still real. Relative reality is real and follows laws and rules which can be probed by science.

actually i voted wrong...i voted for the 20 side..and then saw that there was a still debating part...thats my REAL vote..but im retarded sometimes

I have already addressed this. Science is imperfect. If you are to argue that science isn't inherently flawed, that it isn't prone to breaking down, then I am sorry but you would be wrong. Being flawed admittedly is one of science's (scientific method's) strongest traits. The rest of the argument is semantics:

(1)"-Science's wrongs are not a limit of science but a limit of human observers". When I say science breaks down, it automatically implies that I am addressing human science. I am not addressing science as a thing in itself. It isn't. Science can not exist on its own. It would be like giving a God the property of perfection. As imperfect as we are, we make science.

(2)"Breaking down" used as a slang. Perhaps I could have avoided this heat if I had only used the term "puzzling" instead of "breaking down". Or maybe not. Sheesh, God only knows how much the realists take science to be a full fledged religion. I have to be careful next time.



We are going in circles. There is no mistaking scientific method for human interpretation/understanding because scientific method IS human interpretation/understanding. We are, and it is intrinsically flawed. Regardless if it is a hypothesis, or a result. Question or conclusion. There are no conclusive results. Conclusions serve as a starting point for a new hypothesis.



I don't see why it can't be interpreted that way.



I am not claiming that anyone is claiming that. However you said multiple times that science leads to truth. Science can not lead to truth of any kind because truth is not imperfect, but always true, and can never have the possibility of being false.



No I don't know.



Ponder what you are saying here. You spoke as if science exists as one in and of itself. Now you do the same for reality, to go as far as to say the laws of reality have a concern for our pondering. What does this remind you of? All determinations about reality are purely subjective: Relative reality, is faith and belief in an interpretation from an observation through science.



I am sorry if it seems that way, I don't intend to say that QM is seperate from science. I was only using QM as an example as to how science breaks down.



Scientific method's observation, hypotheses and theory are our own. It remaining the same no matter where it is used does not do away with its shortcomings.



Accuracy is a property of science, and thus is fundamentally susceptible to all its shortcomings.



Earlier you spoke about reality being a law that has "little concern for our pondering", thus quantifying it as existing seperate from us. Now you bring up relative reality as a product of scientific method as a whole! Most scientists 'objectively' claim that logically, the earth is round. This is not true at all. Roundness is a concept, it needs humans to determine what it is through language. There is no absolute truth on a relative sense. That is belief. The earth is not a static solid object. It is impermanent, always morphing, changing. It is made up of tiny subatomic particles constantly moving, and it is full of gaps.



Religious belief. We will never know objectively what is real. We can only tell subjectively. We believe in the existance of objects because of our senses, they are reflected to us by our perceptions. However our perceptions are only ideas in our mind.



The claim that "relative reality is real" is a belief. What you perceive as real by observation through the senses, such as eye sight is all a mental projection from your brain taking chemicals and translating photons bouncing off of a supposed object, sending that as an electrical impulse interpreting it as a picture inside your brain. It only exists inside of your brain. We don't see anything but our own mind. We are mislead to assume what we see are instances of real matter outside us. We will never be able to reach the external world. If there is one.

As Richard Feynman said:







What are we so limited on exactly? Our instrumentation expands our limits to limits we haven't even begun to touch yet.



Science is nothing like religion. Those who think it is do not understand the difference.



The more we know does not equal the less we know. The more we know equals the more we know with the ability to ask new questions.



No they are not. Science is an objective analysis.



It is not an example of how science breaks down it is a very accurate science. This is a gross misunderstanding. Sure Newtonian physics breaks down at the quantum level but that doesn't matter that's why people developed QM.



The earth would be round without human beings here to look at it. It was round before we were here. Its not belief its fact.



Most philosophers and other people who think about these things accept now that there is an objective reality out there. I think we do know what is real its just people are too delusional to accept it or understand it.

Matter is real. Without matter we would not exist. We would have no mind to think about it.



Yes our interpretation of signals coming from outside paint a picture in our mind of reality. That is our conscious subjective experience. But all those signals are coming from an objective reality. You body is part of that objective reality. Everything is part of that objective reality. We can and do study that objective reality. We interact with it. We are made of it. Its certainly real.

Sorry but I can't stand circular arguments about whats real. I think they are self deluding.

Absurd question. I was not the only one who agreed science has its limited, infact I was quoting bufoman. You said it best however: Our instrumentation expands our limits to: other limits. Limitation is not a bad thing.



Then I do not understand the difference.



I didn't state the more we know equals the less we know. I stated clearly that we are intrinsically flawed. And that being flawed actually helps science deduce conclusions that creates more questions. That is the very nature of science. There is no reduction of information going on. Just adjustment.



That's what I said. So, let's not start a quote war solely for the claim of who coined it better.



Why not? So you are telling me that my determination about reality is not relative to my perspective, subject to my bias?



Methodological naturalism. Science has not, and never will through analysis objectify reality. We must take it as a belief that objective reality exists in and of itself, no matter how strong or weak the evidence.



So you are saying, that it is a gross misunderstanding to show how science has flaws through QM...because QM is very accurate? Really?



If a field of science fails in QM, that means science has failed. Once it has failed, we can work on fixing that failure, of which we have not quite done yet with QM. Failures, limitations, break downs, all the same. Lets not get into semantics.



You are trying to objectify our inherent subjectivity. It takes us to do either. You would have to make a leap of faith to believe that the earth would be round without human beings.



A fact is a belief in pragmatic truth. William James states that "spoken truth is not ready-made, but jointly we and reality 'make' truth. "



Well, we all need something to believe in. Even if it is flawed.



You only believe matter is real. If we had the senses or science to actually see matter down to the subatomic level, it would still only be a perception and mental projection in our brain. Even Max Planck (the father of quantum physics) concluded that there is no such thing as matter.. "-As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."





Since I have already commented on this,(it is belief, faith as much as religion) I will tell you what you will tell me: Sorry but I can't stand circular arguments about whats real. I think they are self deluding.



Then we should agree to disagree.

Sorry if I misinterpreted some of your statements.

I don't see how its much of a belief or leap of faith to accept that there is an objective reality. I think the fact that we exist and have senses pretty much confirms it.

I don't have trouble believing in science aswell as "super-naturalism". For example people out there will say there is no such thing as god because science can explain the methods on which elemental matter turns to complex form to create the world as we know it today.

If I was a very dedicated religous person, but not quite ignorant enough to block out proven fact, I would say "yes... that's just how 'HE/SHE/IT' did it."

Maybe you know how it was done, but you could never re-write the rules. Not without extreme consequences.

I hope that doesn't sound too far out or badly formulated, but I do know there are a lot scientists out there who are yet to rule out the creation theory as they yet don't know the answer... just as an example.

After trying to read a little hawking (though even the simplified texts were a little difficult for me to grasp) I was opened up to all possibility as previous to that I was pretty much atheist. But reading up on the possibilities of multi-dimensional zones in space and time travel it had me starting to realise that if an intricate being built our reality in a way that it could manipulate it if it wanted to, then it did a pretty good job of it. But obviously this is just still theory.

I believe that there are an infinite number of possible pasts and futures, but only one present. The present is a singularity. All possible pasts which could lead to this moment are equally real, also all possible futures that this moment could lead to are equally real. The present defines the past and the future.

A singularity is a point of infinite density. Its what was or maybe still is thought to be at the center of black holes. The present place we are in is nothing like a black hole or a singularity.



The only problem with this reasoning is that well then how did a complex super being exist before anything else we know existed? What is that being composed of? Does it still work in the everyday world?

There could very well be a deist god but it could never really be proven and if it doesn't do anything in the world then who cares really. Although there are still other explanations.



I am not sure how that opens up the possibility of manipulation of space and time and reality by any sort of intelligent being.

Very interesting posts everyone! I am glad you all took such great interest in this thread. Its amazing to see how much we are alike and how much we are different in our views.

Thank you all for being so nice and courteous with each other.